[The Villain]

When the three boys went into Godric’s Woods, they had no idea they would be eaten.

Godric’s Wood’s sat in the center of the town of Orange Grove. In fact it pretty much dominated it. There were a lot of stories about the haunted woods. Some were made up, some were exaggerated but still others were true. One thing that wasn’t made up was the beast that would be devouring the children’s bones and drinking their blood.

The creature didn’t care that the boys had names which were Sean, Harry and Jeremy.

It didn’t care that Sean loved playing baseball and dreamed about playing in the major leagues one day even though he knew it would never happen and he would end up working in his father’s contracting business.

It didn’t care that Harry never had a girlfriend or even shared a kiss from a girl and wanted to experience this more than anything in the world.

It also didn’t give a single thought that Jeremy wanted to write a book one day, about what he wasn’t sure but he loved writing and had scribbled a few stories already maybe even some that could be turned into a novel one day.
The monster didn’t know about any of these things and wouldn’t have cared either way. All it knew was that it was hungry and food had walked right into its home and woken it up.

The kids just wanted to have a little bit of dangerous fun. All three of them believed in the stories even though Sean acted like he didn’t but that’s why they went in. It was the risk of doing something they weren’t supposed to that made it exciting. That decision would put them in the stomach of an ancient beast people thought only existed in fairy tales and legends.

“We shouldn’t be doing this.” Harry said for the millionth time.
“Shut up already, would you Harry?” Sean said. He was sick of his friend’s endless complaints. This was supposed to be fun but Harry was ruining it by acting like a big scared girl.
“There’s a reason nobody comes here Sean.” Harry said.
“Lots of people come here.”
“Yeah and look what happened to them.”

Sean stopped walking up the hill and looked back at his friend. Harry was short, chubby and pretty damn ugly. His hair was a wretched brown color that was too long at some parts and too short at others. He always looked like he had just gotten a haircut by a blind barber but that was just how his hair grew. His face was oddly shaped and rough. It gave him an appearance of a goblin or gargoyle. Worst of all, he was constantly poking his fat tongue out of his mouth in a quick lizard like motion.

Sean hated that. Sometimes he wondered why he was even friends with such a loser like Harry. If he was forced to look for an answer though he would probably realize, that despite his cocky attitude, he wasn’t happy with himself and hung around with Harry to raise his self-esteem.

Sean himself was tall, lean with rich wavy blond hair. His complexion was clear and his face was shaped so well, people would have a hard time thinking he hadn’t gotten plastic surgery if it wasn’t for his age. His eyes were a bright blue with tiny speckles of green in them that made his eyes shoot out like bright lights.

“Harry, nobody knows what happened to them.” Sean said shaking his head and then turned back towards the trail and continued leading the three of them.
“Yeah but they’re still missing.”
“What are you guys talking about?” Jeremy suddenly said. Sean and Harry both looked at him quizzically even though they were used to the fact that despite being right next to the both of them, he hadn’t heard a single word they said. Jeremy had a bad habit of zoning in and out while his imagination ran wild. He could be perfectly focused one minute and then see something that would make him think of a story that he could write and off he would go with the possibilities‘.

Sean smirked and chuckled. Unlike Harry, Sean knew why he was friends with Jeremy. He actually liked him and despite his habit of losing touch with the world around him, he had fun with him. The two of them had been friends for a long time. Plus being seen with Jeremy, who was almost as tall as Sean with long thick black hair and pale skin that actually looked very good on him, wasn’t embarrassing like being seen with Harry the Troll.

“We’re talking about the missing people.” Harry said even though they weren’t really. Jeremy chuckled almost exactly like Sean had done.
“Which ones?” He said and immediately looked to Sean for approval who smiled and laughed back. Harry shook his head. Just like Sean wondered why he hung out with Harry, he wondered the same towards the two of them. Sean was a jerk and Jeremy was a spaced out suck up. But unlike Sean, whose reasons for his friendship with Harry were buried deep under denial and repressed feelings, Harry knew exactly why he was friends with them.

Who else would he be friends with?

Nobody liked Harry. It wasn’t just his appearance either. He didn’t bathe much and had really bad manners. He was always farting around people and then laughing loudly about it as if he was proud and he looked like a pig eating out a trough no matter what he happened to be eating at the time. He had really bad social skills and could barely get out two words that were intelligible. Whenever he did happen to say something, it was always the wrong thing. Besides the lizard tongue, another bad habit of Harry’s was putting his foot in his mouth. That was why he had never had a girlfriend or even kissed a girl.
He might have been horrendous and disgusting and well deserving of the nickname The Troll which unbeknownst to him his friend Sean had started, but he was a romantic at heart. All he wanted was to be in love. He knew he would be a good boyfriend. He would treat whoever he was with right. He would give them just the right amount of attention but not be too clingy. He would never choose his friends over her or do anything selfish and insulting to her. He would make it his duty to be the best boyfriend he could be.
The only problem was no girl in their right mind was going to date Harry “The Troll” Sherman. Even the ugly girls, who themselves were worthy of some colorful nicknames, seem repulsed by them and the ones that weren’t Harry couldn’t get anyway because of his horrific awkwardness that never seemed to leave him no matter how hard he tried to fit in.

So despite his not liking his friends very much, they were all he had and for all he knew all he would ever have so he stuck around despite the insults and being forced by Sean “I’m the leader so we do what I say” Tinker into going into Godric’s Woods, a place that scared the hell out of him.
“You shouldn’t laugh about it Jeremy, people really have gone missing and people have been killed in here like Caleb’s brother.” Harry said responding to Jeremy’s snicker.

Both Sean and Jeremy shot a look at each that actually seemed compassionate. Even though Sean could be a dick and Jeremy basically followed in his footstep’s they weren’t without feelings and it was impossible to not feel bad for Caleb Matthew. Caleb’s little brother had been snatched up by a man one day right in front of Caleb and his parents. The man had taken off into the woods after him and Caleb and his family took off right behind him. They chased him deep into the woods only to have the man pointlessly toss

Caleb’s brother Eddie down into a well killing him on impact.
To make matter’s worse after that Caleb’s father had snapped and savagely killed Caleb, his friends and even one of his friends mother. Two of Caleb’s friends were never even found but the ones that were had been massacred.
Caleb’s head was never found either.

To make things even stranger, Caleb’s dad Lucas had blamed the whole thing on an alien who he said killed his son and took his head away with him in a spaceship. He said he had chased the thing into the woods and it got away right after chopping off his own hand. The psycho had actually severed his own hand in his madness. Luckily for the people of Orange Grove, he was safely tucked away in Craven Asylum.

There were many stories like that in Orange Grove and it always increased the fear and mystery that was Godric’s Woods.


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